Saturday, January 13, 2007

While it appeared initially that Cisco(Linksys) owned the iPhone trademark, it now appears that Cisco does not own the mark as claimed in their recent lawsuit. This is based on publicly available information from the US Patent and Trademark office, as well as public reviews of Cisco products over the past year. The trademark was apparently abandoned in late 2005/early 2006 because Cisco was not using it. Ed Burnette over at ZDNet asks a question we haven't seen anywhere else. Has Cisco already lost its right to the iPhone trademark? Several specialists in trademark law describe how Cisco's trademark was registered back in '99 and may not have been properly renewed or used within the 6 years (plus 6 month grace period) span allowed.

According to Jay Behmke, a partner at CMPR who specializes in trademark law,

The Cisco iPhone trademark was registered 11/16/1999 (Reg. No. 2293011). In order to keep a trademark registration active, you have to file a Declaration of Use on or before the sixth anniversary of the registration date, in which you state, under penalty of perjury, that you have been using the trademark continuously during that period. The sixth anniversary would have been 11/16/2005.Cisco did not file the Declaration of Use by 11/16/2005, which if they had been using the trademark would seemingly have been easy to do.

A search of product reviews of the Linksys CIT200 shows no mention of the word iPhone. The first mention appeared in December 2006 when Cisco unveiled a series of new products bearing the iPhone name. It was not until then that the CIT200 was rebranded under the iPhone moniker!! Read the number of articles/links paraded in support of this argument. Clearly,Cisco claims look lot more weak. The case is getting more and more curious.